Happy Anniversary to Eric Greydawn and Lady Greydawn! In celebration The Lady* has a new inventory of color custom cloaks! These cloaks will be seasonal rares, so make sure to check them out before Monday.

From Eric Greydawn:

Two years ago, I spent the night before our wedding online playing DragonFable. Our alarm clock wasn't working and I needed to be awake to make sure that Lady was up early enough to get ready for the wedding. DF has been a part of our lives since before we were married, and since we got married the forums have been really good to us. We would like to thank you all for being a part of our lives, both before I became an intern and after. You really are the greatest gaming community of all time!

2011 AE Calendar Giveaway!Check out the AQW Design Notes today to get the details on how to get your hands on one of four calendars! Full rules for the contest can be found on the Portal site.

Dragon*Con!This weekend the whole Underground Lab is getting transported to Atlanta for Dragon*Con! The official AE Panel is Friday, September 2nd from 2:30 to 5PM in the Savannah Room of the Sheraton hotel. We'll also have a fan table in the Hyatt** where you'll be able to meet AE staff all weekend!

This Friday!The next quest in the True Mortal saga is expected this weekend! Eric Greydawn, True Mortal and Tomix have been hard at work on it and it's chillingly awesome.

Keep in mind we will be putting the release out from Dragon*Con, but minimal dragon battles are expected.***

*Visit Serenity at the Inn to "Sleep Until Evening" and then run north towards the Tower.**We won't know exactly where until we check in Thursday night.***Artix is taking his full set of Paladin Armor just to be safe though!

Oh wow it's been an insanely crazy day! Everyone pulled together this week and helped to make a truely epic finale! Even Warlic himself helped out when Rolith had to venture outside the Underground Lab yesterday (and he's still not back! eep!*) and helped to get the hugemongous Titan programmed!

This titan is huge too! You'll have to fight him piece by piece... but how will you be able to defeat something that can just call more shadows to itself to recover? If you'd like to attempt DF's largest titan ever on extreme mode, just hit the "X" button right next to the normal quest button.

If you can defeat the Super Mega Ultra Darkness Dracolich you can merge your reward from the quest with the Stone of the Falconreach Tower to get one of the Glory Weapons!

The entire DragonFable team presents to you the finale! Enjoy and BattleOn!

We're racing against the clock at the Underground Lab to get everything prepared for the finale! Ghost is hard at work on the cutscenes, Tomix has created the pieces of the largest titan DragonFable has ever seen and Rolith is making it do very, very evil things. The full power of the Ultimate Bacon Orb is on our side, but will the power of a complete breakfast be enough to take down the Super Mega Ultra Darkness Dracolich?

The Power of GoodIf you can win this ultimate battle the power of Good can be yours to wield! True Mortal was tasked with creating the first official Good weapons as the reward for finishing the Chapter One story!

Only one quest remains in the Chapter One Finale arc. It's do or die time in Falconreach. With Cysero's help, we have our Deus Ex Baconia and it's time to face the Super Mega Ultra Darkness Dracolich. Will the power of breakfast be enough to defeat the darkness? Or will Lore be overcome....

What's Next?The first few weeks after the final finale feature* will be dedicated to bug fixing. Several of us in the Underground Lab will be making brand new characters and playing through the game several sections at a time and fixing, buffing, nerfing (oh noes!) as we go. We'll have tagged threads on the forums as we play through. You guys are more then welcome to make new characters and join us too!

One of the big things we are considering is finally level tiering the main Orb sagas (it is a hotly debated topic in office though, so it's not definite). It would help to streamline the saga and finally give an actual "order" to go through them, even though there technically isn't one. Chapter Two would still be scaled though, so that new players and old would be able to play through all the new stuff that's coming. What do you guys think?

So What's After The Bug Fixing?An interesting addition has been made to the character selection screen.... Wonder what's gonna go there?**

There really is only one person in Falconreach crazy enough to have a plan.... but just what kind of plan will he come up with? Changing elements, playing with forces beyond what normal mortals can comprehend, turning things into fish... if he needs to bend time and space to give you an edge, though, just who might come out of the twisting void to oppose it?

The quest this week should come as no surprise, really, and hopefully bring a bit of the campy humor found throughout DragonFable into the end of this long, dark* Finale chain.

The situation is grim. The Super Ultra Mega Darkness Dracolich is planet sized, with the sun in it's belly. Darkness has overlain all of Lore and, as more time passes, it will begin to surpass the other elements throwing everything more and more out of balance.

There is still time for hope though! All of Lore's most powerful forces are gathered in the one beacon of Light left in Lore, Falconreach. Surely, someone in Falconreach is crazy enough to have a plan to fight the Mysterious Behemoth orbiting in the sky?

The Super Ultra Mega Dracolich must be stopped, even if you have to bend time and space to do it! If you're brave enough to try, these weapons could be yours....

Just keep in mind, though, with every crazy plan comes it's detractors.... However far you feel you have to go to defeat the Mysterious Stranger, there are some who might think it too far....

The Super Mega Ultra Dracolich has eaten the sun! A sun much closer and much smaller then Earth's sun... (/coughforums) and now the planet-sized dracolich is orbiting Lore! The power of the Ultimate Orb is keeping the sun's light hidden in the dracolich's belly... but there has to be hope! There has to be a way to defeat the Super Mega Ultra Dracolich.... but just who is crazy enough to have an idea of how?

This Friday's release is the last one before the epic Chapter One finale. It's the beginning of the end... dundunduuuuuuuuuunnnnnn!

The newest quest in the Chapter One finale is live! Fight off the darkness monsters that are attacking the mages and gnomes trying to light Falconreach! There's also a poor, tired Fairy who needs a little encouragement, so make sure to giver her a hand....

The Super Ultra Mega Darkness Dracolich continues to grow though. How will you stop this massive enemy? With the Ultimate Orb inside of it... who knows what this monster can do? Whos knows what the power of the Orb will let it contain?

Stoneheart FallThe third random quest, Encampment, is now available through True Mortal! Just who are these incubators working for?

Sidhe WingsTrue Mortal also has a new shop full of beautiful Sidhe Wings. Each wing set is 200 DC and you can upgrade it to the next level tier with 15 Ignis Gems. If you don't feel like collecting the gems, you can just sell back your old ones and buy the next tier.

The never before seen engine....

Here it is (Run!) The original, never before seen 3-vs-3 combat engine that we fused with the ArchKnight exploration system to create DragonFable. Click on the white button to begin combat. You control the three units on the left. You can tell which character is active because they have a yellow circle under them. Click on your opponent to attack. Yes, it is possible to attack members of your own party... and even yourself. The first special attack effect I added was "confuse" which is indicated by stars spinning around a character's head. When confused a character will attack a target completely at random and is uncontrollable. Please remember... this was made waaaaaaaay before DragonFable. (This is why they do not let me program anymore!)

Meanwhile... in an EbilCorp Dungeon

So, I am still trapped down here. It is very lonely. Just me... and *pulls out cell phone* My buddy George Lowe. I should probably use the cellphone to call for help. But it down to only 10% battery and George Lowe really cracks me up. That is right George... "I do not like dem Ninjas" Everyone's life and dungeon experinece should be narrorated by Space ghost. Oooh... I just heard something. Sounds like footsteps... will post tomorrow!

...can someone send help? Or maybe undead?

Sorry for the late post today. My video game company was overthrown by a awesome fan who is known online only as Winnie. How did this happen? Good question! A few years back her parents arranged a phone interview with me for Winnie's Girl Scout troup assignment. Her and her sister are serious players that have been with us since DragonFable. I have been in touch with the family ever since. So as part of their family vacation, they arranged to stop by the Secret Underground Lab. Overjoyed at meeting them all in person, I said to Winnie, "Good! Now that you are here, you can take over." Next thing I know she says, "OK." and commands our ninja guards to take me away. A few hours later I woke up here. Not sure where "here" is. Sorta dark. Hope it is not an EbilCorp prison. At least someone left a laptop in here.... it is sorta small though. Pink. And smells like girl scout cookies. By the way... can someone send someone to rescue me please? Or Maybe some undead? Ooooh... I nearly forgot. Here is today's picture!

Today's picture! Twilly Version 3.0

There have been 6 versions of Twilly. Starting with the tennis shoe wearing green bean with an afro version (You can see this hanging in Yulgar's Inn within AQWorlds) and moving onward to the adorable moglin that he is today. Here is the 3rd attempt at Twilly... back when he had the football shaped head that started all of the Moglin punting jokes! Check back tomorrow... and I post the actual, semi-playable, Chibi ArchKnight combat engine (built before we ever wrote a line of code for DragonFable) for you to laugh at. Then get ready... because it is almost time for FRIDAY RELEASE DAY!

What DragonFable ALMOST looked like!

After the the original AdventureQuest was created, I tried making a game to play in my Pocket PC (Because they were going to be THE FUTURE!) The game was called ArchKnight. It was the story of a young boy who dreamed of becoming a Knight... and to become a Knight, all he needed to do was save a Princess. The game was build with bitmap graphics instead of Flash's built in line art for speed... and the art was tiny for the small hand held screen. The humor in the game was unique for its time and the quest style was fun. As you may already know, it is this game that was the basis of the DragonFable project! ... but there was another direction we could have gone. Instead of making DragonFable, we considering making... Chibi ArchKnight.

Chibi ArchKnight

Can you imagine if Ghost, Tomix Oishii & Thyton were all drawing this style instead of DragonFable style? Do not get me wrong... these little chibi characters are cute. I drew them for another 3vs3 chibi combat game that I also made for the PocketPC. Yup, that is right. DragonFable combined the walkaround and cutscene concept of ArchKnight with the 3vs3 combat system that these little chibi heroes used to fight. Zhoom coded the entire thing from scratch over a few months. These were the days before the secret underground lab existed... when AE headquarters was my dining room table. We used to have as many as 9 people come to work at the house. The neighbors were so scared that there were so many cars that they called the police on us.... twice! I remember showing the game concept to the police officer and he said, "Woah. you guys are really making games? Cool!" Check back tomorrow and I will post another tasty treat from this vault of old game files for you! Hmmm, I wonder which one we will pick for tomorrow *dunn dunn dunn*

Forum/Twitter Question: What are you thoughts on the little chibi DF/AQ characters? What would your character look like if you were one of them?

Ancient screenshots uncovered from the vault.

While doing a major backup of all my files*, I stumbled upon a treasure trove of original AE game files and graphics... including prototypes and original art for DragonFable! As we are only weeks away from the epic finale of DragonFable's Chapter 1, I thought you might enjoy some behind the scenes secrets of how this amazing game came to be.

At first, we were trying to add a walk-around-engine to the original AdventureQuest. The code was written by a awesome player named Tynril. But, a lot of players felt it changed AdventureQuest's play style too much. So we decided to build a new web game from the ground up to support this play style.... with all new, original graphics and a deep storyline. A lot of people thought we were going to fail. But we were really confident that we were making something truly special. This is about the time that Zhoom joined AE. He wrote the code that z-ordered objects on the screen. Although... there were some problems**. In my next post I will show you what Dragonfable ALMOST looked like. Until tomorrow... Battle On!

* 10 gold says he accidentally deleted more files than he backed up.** We want to see!!!

Whew, we are live... finally! Visit Elysia to get started on your journey to save all the villagers in the path of the shadow that you can!

Rolith did some amazing work to fully illustrate the darkness encroaching across the world. Unfortunately, we weren't able to complete the full immersion that I had hoped for in the towns that have been engulfed. The extra screens that I added to the towns didn't make it in tonight, mostly because I couldn't get the code to work. D: So just consider the world pre-quest for right now!

Purple House!The new house items that were previewed yesterday are available through True Mortal in Stoneheart Fall. There might be some new equippable items available with Ignis Gems this weekend as well.

A path leading to Blackwyn Tomb is now open! Use your Travel Map to get to Hunter's Paradise and walk to the left to get to the new walk through to the Tomb. The quick button to get to the Tomb in Moonridge is now gone.